The looks I get are probably the best thing about growing out my monster Movember mustache. The crooked, perplexed smiles, the high-fives (“Bro! Nice ‘stache!”), the lingering eye contact. I get hit on by people (of both sexes) who wouldn’t normally give me a second glance (and I’m ignored by women who’d probably find me
kind of cute if I wasn’t all ‘stached up). Sometimes, I can’t tell if people appreciate it or are afraid of it.
But they do often ask me about it, and that gives me the perfect opportunity to explain that I grow a mustache each year to raise awareness about men’s health issues and to get more men screened for prostate cancer.
We lost my father to colon cancer (at least, that’s where it started), and I dedicate each Movember effort to him, but one in seven men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in his lifetime, and around 221,000 American men will be diagnosed with it this year alone. Getting more men to know about getting tested, and putting more money into research could help save lives. So I grow a mustache each November, with the thought that a conversation and some requests for donations can, in some small part, help the cause.
After the mustache disaster of 2013 (the meme part worked great, but dating suffered in a big way), I’ve returned to my trucker/biker/cowboy look. I figure, if I’m going to grow a mustache, I’m going to make it a statement. This year’s look had a bit more gray in it, but I guess that’s just how it’s going to be from here on out.
Honestly, I actually really liked this year’s ‘stache. It was fun to grow and fun to wear. I pondered keeping it, but the truth is that I like kissing way too much to actually have facial hair. I like my upper lip soft, not bristly, and though the mustache can be a fun novelty, nothing satisfies like lips to lips, noses softly touching, faces pressed together. It would take some serious convincing for me to give that up for more than 30 days, once per year. I can’t imagine growing a beard for the same reason.
November is always a fraught month, as the winter weather starts to dig in, demands from clients increase as we close out the year, and little anniversaries of heartbreak and missed opportunities surface with the brittle wind and short, short, holy-fucking-shit-they’re-short, days. It can be hard to stay positive and upbeat, but when you look at your face in the mirror and laugh every time, that certainly lightens the load.
This year, Simone and I flew out to La Jolla to hang out in a rented condo with my youngest sister, her husband, their two-year-old daughter, and my sweet mom. It wasn’t quite the beach escape I was hoping for (crossing La Jolla off the list of possible beach house locations—too cold, too rocky), but we had a joyous time together. I love my family. We missed having my middle sister and her brood there, but they were on their own travel adventure.
On the last day, my sister drove Simone and me to a rental car place, and loaded us up with the last of the stuff from my father’s house — two big boxes of vinyl, a bunch of CDs, more cartons of books, and some other keepsakes. I’d road-tripped an entire SUV full of memories last October, but a few remaining boxes had been left behind, and it took a year to organize myself to go get them.
Simone and I had two long, fun days of cross-country travel, from San Diego to Denver. We sang together as we took turns DJing, she worked on her AP US History homework, and I drove and drove and drove. The trip gave me plenty of time to tell her stories about my father and my family, but there were also long periods of quiet, with just the music playing. Those times, with Simone deep into her homework, or doing whatever she was doing on her phone, were also good for me.
When you have the cruise control pegged at the maximum safe speed, and the road ahead is wide open (except for the occasional holiday traffic jam or minor snowstorm), your mind takes you wherever it wants to go. I thought a lot about my father. And I thought a lot about my love life — my dream of finding that one right woman. I thought about other road trips I’ve taken over the years.
And I thought about my kick-ass mustache.
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